Because I Am So Lazy Today

I could just sit in the yard and take pictures all day. None of them worth a shit, either, but it's such a nice day, the ground still damp, the green so green, the birds so happy.

I tried to convince this man

to stay in the bed with me for the entire day, just being drowsy and dreamy but no, he had to get up and go to work building a sign.
Ah. Lah. That man. So I got up too and we heated up leftovers from last night's dinner out and dined on the back porch.
He doesn't know I took his picture. I feel like Harriet The Spy.


I told you the phlox would soon be blooming. I should really look into planting a variety of a different color, although this color is nice. My yard is filled with it.

It is hard to take a picture of a cardinal. They are very flitty. And flighty.

Oh Elvis. My fine rooster. He and the hens have done a lovely job, the last few days, of weeding out (and fertilizing, I am sure), the kitchen garden.

And I wander around with my camera in my hand and the garden calls.

There are beans which need to be picked

swollen and ready to shell.

The crazy-yard-longs are still growing like crazy (yard-longs).


The cherry tomatoes are bursting, too, and beg to be gathered and et up. Mmmm. Tiny jewels of warm sugar.

Here's a watermelon. It does not require anything of me right now except...oh, if I don't weed, we won't be able to find it to pick when the time comes.

The zinnias (thank-you, Bethany!) are beginning to bloom and the butterflies are dancing around in anticipation.

They, too, would appreciate some weeding. The zinnias, not the butterflies. They do not care at all.

The hens do not require my help but perhaps they are happy about the fresh straw. I told Mr. Moon last night that I had cleaned the coop and put down straw and he said, "I don't want you to put straw down in there."
I said, "I know. But I wanted to."
I was high on pain. He laughed. Not because I was in pain. But because he loves me.

Here's Buddha. He's up to his neck in flowers now. He just laughs and laughs and laughs.

He reminds me to slow down and be happy. I listen.

Then I see this:

Cycle of life, y'all. Cycle of life. The katydid dies, the ants will feast.

Well, I guess I'll put on my overalls and go do something of worth in that garden. It has been so good to us this year, I should do something for it and actually, it makes me so very happy to do so.
But I ain't gonna do it fast. I'm going to take it slow and easy. I'm going to enjoy it.

This is medicine, this is peace, this is good.

Here

Well, we're home and I wish I could say that all the ghosts have been exorcised, all the anxiety has been relieved, that my love for the island is as it was so many years ago but I would be lying if I said that.

It was so beautiful. Dog Island is beautiful. There are piney woods and there is the Gulf beach and there is the bay and there is swamp and marsh. There are oak trees and the pines, palmetto and sea grass. There are wildflowers and wild rosemary. There are the birds from the giant blue heron to the tiny Mexican doves which come to the bird bath by the porch. There is life everywhere you look.
And the people were there too, this weekend. Almost every house I saw was occupied which is something I have never seen before. Children and parents, boats anchored, people fishing and swimming and walking the flats at sunset's low tide as Mr. Moon and I do. All of us there, getting in the last of the goodness of it before it is killed. I can say it no more clearly than that.


There is more life in those muddy tidal flats than you can imagine. And of course, with every step we took, I wondered how long all of those creatures- the big and the small- will be alive in a month.




When we were coming across the bay a pod of dolphins met us and we stopped and they played around us and I tried to take pictures but it's almost impossible, and I prayed that those creatures are smart enough to get the hell out of Dodge before the oil slick covers the still-clear waters, blue and green, and turning teal and turquoise under the setting sun. Turning into a misty silver blue after the sun has dipped below the horizon. That water.

The old Land Rover started right up which is a small miracle in and of itself. Here. I took a picture of myself in one of the mirrors as we drove along the sandy road:

And the house was waiting for us, still standing. Always another miracle. It needs painting, the deck off the side is falling off, the steps are not so sure, but there it was.

A tiny frog, friendly and spotted, was perched just above the door knob as I went to unlock it.

The view out the back was as gorgeous as ever. The water was still, the air was too.

The two sentinel pines still stand but the beach grows smaller every month and there is only a strip of sand where there used to be a beach and I know that one day they will be gone, those beautiful pines, unless a storm somehow brings us more sand. It happens. The island shifts and changes, it has forever.

And I was happy to be there but I was not. I tell you this- I think the suffering I did while I was in that house was more profound than I even know. It was hard and what made it even harder was the beauty of it all. Add to that the death which is surely flowing our way and well, bittersweet doesn't even begin to describe how I felt this weekend.

Saturday morning Mr. Moon got up before sunrise to go pick up Jessie and two of his friends to go offshore fishing and when I got up in the empty house, I felt panicked. I couldn't eat. I decided to go for a walk before it got too hot. I left the house with a bottle of water and the camera, sunscreened and with my hat on and I walked on the Gulf for awhile where I took this picture of how clear the water is:

A man was swimming with a dog and when I walked by, the dog barked at me and tried to swim in as if to get me. I knew it was false threat but it added to my anxiety as did the blank shore of the Gulf. I do not love the Gulf side of the island the way I love the bay side. The bay has trees and so many different birds. The Gulf has that endless water, the white sand, the houses which are losing their footing as the water creeps up closer and closer and the unrelenting sun which even at ten in the morning beats down with a powerful force. I stripped down to my bathing suit and got in the water and let it rush over me and breathed into the current. I tried to slow my heartbeat. I tried to cool my body.
I crossed back over to the bay and made my way home. I found a wedding bouquet of balloons, so incongruous and odd in the dunes where the birds are nesting.

I took its picture. I wondered who the bride and groom were and where they were married. I thought about their hearts soaring as the balloons were released after the vows were said. I tossed them back into the air and they floated for a moment but came back down to earth.


Mr. Moon and Jessie came back home and brought a cobia to clean for me to cook. We played cards, I lost every hand. I was so happy to have that man and that girl back with me. The house let go of its sadness for awhile and we drank beer and listened to Prairie Home Companion and made bawdy jokes as did the people on the show. I made the most beautiful pie I've ever made, rolling out the crust with a bottle full of wine from the refrigerator.


We watched the sunset again, we walked the flats again. At this time of day, there is no way to take a bad picture. Everything is lit with magic. Everything is every thing and a metaphor for it all, lit with that ethereal light.


If there is anything more beautiful than a sunset over the water I don't know what it could be.


One's child, perhaps, sitting in the glow of it. That could be more beautiful.

We ate cobia that night, as firm and fresh as any fish I've ever eaten, and okra cooked with tomatoes and onions and corn and peppers. We watched a Northern Exposure episode in which a circus comes to town and the Flying Man falls in love with Marilyn.

We slept. We got up and I was anxious again. We did the laundry, washed all the sheets and towels, I took a picture of the pines beside the house.


And the dragonfly which sits on top of the lightening-blasted flag pole.

We packed the clothes, the left-overs, the shrimp and crab we bought on the way down we never ate, the sea trout Mr. Moon caught this morning in the surf.
We came home.

We are home.
The chickens are all here. Hank took good care of them. Mr. Moon cleans off the boat. I need to go marinate some shrimp and the trout for our dinner.
I am filled with it all and don't know where I am- here or there. Writing this, I am back there. Stopping and looking around, I am here where my phlox is beginning to bloom everywhere, bringing a pink-purple color to the palate of the green which is my yard in Lloyd. A color not unlike the sunset on Dog Island where I know the sun is setting, where I know the water, at this moment, is still clear and where all the creatures, at this moment, are safe.

People change. Their hearts and minds change. So do islands. So do bodies of water. Some change is good and some is uncomfortable and some is deadly.

We experience what we can while we can. We cross the water, the boat carries us to this side, to that, our hearts carry us up like a bouquet of balloons and then fall back down, a craziness of gold and purple in the white-sand dunes.

We think about it, we hold it all in our hearts, those crazy up-and-down hearts. We consider ourselves lucky, no matter what. We play the hands we're dealt, we do the best we can. We hold tightly to the hands of those we love.

We breathe and cool our bodies in the water. We make a pie. We fry a fish. We cook some grits.

We come home.

We do.

Home. By Jessie.

When Jessie was out yesterday, she had her new camera with her and snapped many pictures.
She took pictures of the post office box and the porches and spiders and dirt dauber structures and our house and the dogs and me and her daddy.
She's on her way to Miami now to catch the plane for Jamaica and I'm thinking about her. I'm also thinking about how really, I need to pour a little water over the flames of my ego and realize that trying to protect and shelter my children even when they are adults is mostly evidence of a vast over-fed sense of my abilities. And it also implies that I don't trust their abilities which I very much do so what's the deal here?
I'm here if they need me. They know it and that's that.
Or that's what I'm trying to learn now and it's about damn time.
On to the pictures. Click on them to see them in their full-sized glory.



Here's me and Mr. Moon. He's eating the last of the blackberry cobbler I made last weekend. With ice cream on it. Mr. Moon loves ice cream. I love Mr. Moon.


This is where I get my mail every day. The boxes are just like the ones in the Roseland post office when I was a child. I think our number there was 174 but I'm not sure. Our post mistress in Roseland was a woman named Nelly. Our post mistresses here is a woman named Joanne. I have grown up to come home.


Our house. It's a very, very, very fine house. And there indeed two cats in the yard. Check out the live oak on the left. It's huge. I read a thing the other day that said live oaks live 600 years. Two hundred to grow, two hundred to live, two hundred to die. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I think that tree is at least two hundred years old.



And here's me, standing in the little yard of my office, surveying my pinecone lillies, my phlox, my ferns. Buster is surveying with me.

And finally, because they are so pretty and photogenic, two pictures of the chickens.


Yes. Suzie is really that big and Miss Betty is really that small.


And the little ones. See Elmira way in the back with her little head poking up? She must be related to Miss Betty. But she's a plucky, healthy chick. Aren't the teenager chickens funny looking with their feathers all coming in and sticking out everywhere as if they hadn't figured out quite where to go yet? I think they are.

And looking at these pictures, I realize that I have plenty to worry about and take care of right here where I live. And that the children, my grown-up, very capable, very smart and amazing children, know where they can find me if they need me.

Right here, maybe in my garden. They can just fly right over here on their own strong wings.


Amen.
Happy Friday.

Love...Ms. Moon

Magic And Houses And Being Home

Mr. Moon wanted to buy a new bow to shoot deer with yesterday and so we drove up to Cairo, Georgia where he'd located one big enough for a man almost seven feet tall. We made an excursion of it, taking the Cutlass down country roads and it was lovely.

You've heard of the "magic hour"? That hour right before dusk when the light is perfect? Well, this time of year every second seems like the magic hour and as we drove through pine forests with wire grass and blooming golden rod and big oaks bearded with Spanish moss tossing in the wind, everything looked like something from a movie, or a coffee table book, perhaps entitled, Scenes From The South, A Glorious Day.

We stopped in Thomasville and ate lunch at that farmer's market restaurant, I forget what it's called, but at one point, sitting there with a plate of three kinds of beans, two kinds of greens, okra and tomatoes, a piece of baked chicken, and carrot salad before me I said something like "I could just sit here for the rest of my life."

Bring me some more tea, please, Honey, and pass that Crystal hot sauce, if you don't mind.

The bow-purchasing took, quite literally, a few hours but I had two New Yorker magazines to read so I didn't mind. I sat in the shade and read my magazines and occasionally went inside to use the restroom or check on the progress of the transaction which took so long because they have to do all sorts of stuff TO the bow before you can use it.

While I was waiting, I talked to a little boy who got inside a camo tent set up on the porch of the store next to where I was reading.

"Hey!" he said to me. "I'm a bat! I like the darkness!"

"Really?" I asked, looking up from my magazine. "Are you upside down in there?"

"I am!" he said. "But now I'm going to turn back into a human," and he shook the tent and made it tremble and when he popped out, he was indeed a real human little boy with brown hair and brown eyes and a very wide smile and his parents called to him and he got in the car with them and drove away and they all waved to me and I waved back.

Besides all the trees and fields we passed on our way there and back, we passed a lot of beautiful old houses, some large and handsome and some small and more cabin-like and one of the cabins was the prettiest color blue. I said a silent thanks to my grandfather who had moved from his native Pennsylvania to Tennessee long before I was born because I believe it may be against the law in the farming country of PA to paint your house blue and I'd hate to live in a place where there are no blue houses. Or pink ones, for that matter.

I'm one of those people who has always seen houses and thought, "There. That should be my house. I could go in there and find the kitchen and make biscuits and I could lie down in a bed in a room in that house and sleep peacefully and I would be happy there."

All my life I have done that. I remember doing it when I was a child, passing shotgun shacks with geraniums blooming from tomato cans on the front porch and and I remember doing it in high school, craving to live in a tiny stucco house in the middle of Winter Haven that had a tile roof.

The one thing that all these fantasy houses had in common was that they were old. Those old houses with character and personality developed from housing generations of people are the ones I have always craved to move into. Slip out of my own skin and into another.

But I don't do that anymore. I have the house now that I used to drive by and think, "Oh, I should live there." And I do. I live here. It's unbelievable to me still, after four years.

Sometimes when I'm outside, people will slow down as they drive by and they ask me questions about the house. I'm always happy to talk to them. "It's a beautiful home," they say wistfully as they drive away and I nod in agreement. It is a beautiful home. It's not especially fancy and it's not especially huge and it's not especially ancient, but it's graceful and it looks almost as if it grew here, like the oaks, the way it rambles on with its additions and porches.

It's not everyone's idea of a dream home. But it's mine. And the fact of that matter is, for the first time in my life, I feel as if I really am home. When we were in the process of buying this house, I was in a big Dixie Chicks phase and their song, A Home, constantly went through my head. I almost feel as if they had something to do with the magic of us finding the place, (and so did the Beatles, but that's another story), selling the house we were living in, and buying this one. Their song spoke so fiercely and eloquently of the regret of not living in a home that might have been. And I knew somehow, that if I didn't live in this house, I would live with that regret for the rest of my life.

Tonight I went out front and did something I've never done before. I stuck a political candidate's sign in front of my house. In front of my home. It says, "Change." It's a sign for Barack Obama, the man who I am fairly certain will be the first president of our country whose skin is not lily white. His sign sits in front of my white house, built for white people by the labor of black men, most likely, in a time when those same black men probably couldn't even dream of a time when they could cast a vote for president, much less run for president.

Times change. History moves on. And here in this house, my home, I feel part of it.

I love the south. I love my home. I love my community which is made of white people and black and where the golden rod blooms and people live their lives and live in all sorts of houses.

This is our home.

Mr. Moon is out in the woods with his new bow and it is the magic hour as the last of the day's light pours itself onto my trees, my flowers, my house.

And I am about to go make soup in the kitchen of my house and there is no house I'd rather make soup in and there is no place I'd rather be but here, in my community, where I belong.

My home. My beautiful home.

Where I have no regrets; none at all.

Home

I'm feeling a lot better, although some days are better than others.
Yesterday was a fine day. My daughter and I went to town and shopped for a few things for the new apartment she's about to move into and we had lunch and I was just generally in a good mood and found myself smiling and laughing and just generally being happy, which feels at once "normal" and a miracle, both at the same time.
And today? Not so great. I just remembered that I hadn't taken my antidepressant yet today and I suppose that could be the reason, but I think not. I think it has more to do with my daughter and the fact that she's moving out again, taking a few bigger steps into her real, own life and it makes me think of myself when I was her age.
I moved away from my home in central Florida to go to college in Denver when I was eighteen and except for a few vacations, I essentially never returned. Home for me wasn't a place where love washed the corners, if you know what I mean. It was a place where the corners were dark and the secrets were many and too big to confront and I wanted nothing more to do with that place, although I missed my baby brothers so much that it was painful.
I used to dream that my parents would be killed in some freak accident and I would be given custody of those boys. I wanted to bring them into the light and raise them. I wanted to feed them good food and pour love all over them like golden honey and rock them to sleep at night and let them become little hippie boys and learn to grin from the heart and play in the woods and I wanted to teach them to trust and let them grow and become who they were meant to be, instead of scared little shadows slipping along the walls, hoping not to be noticed by their father.
But no one died and they, too, left that house as soon as they could and never went back. None of my siblings ever returned home to live after leaving. It just never occurred to us to do that.
On the other hand, all of my kids have returned home, at one time or another. I'm sure it wasn't exactly what they wanted to do, but I don't think it was too painful for them. People may bitch and moan about "yo-yo" children, but honestly, home is a good place to be if you need a good place to be and life has thrown a monkey wrench into the game plan. Things happen. Break-ups and marriages, problems that require a haven, a harbor, a temporary place to go where there's always a place at the table and clean sheets and people who love you, no matter what.
People who love you. No matter what.
And I think my kids know, no, I am certain that they know that wherever I am, that place will be there for them.
A place to be when feet need to be gotten back underneath them, when hearts need to be mended, when souls need to be tended.
I wish I had had that.
And perhaps that's where my sadness comes from today.
I never had that.
And I think I've spent my entire life regretting that, longing for it, and trying to create it.
Somehow, through some miracle, I believe I have and although I never want my children to suffer heartbreak or hardship, I know those are part of life. And I am so grateful that they have brought themselves home when those things occurred in their lives. I am more than grateful that they knew they could.
That they know they can.
Perhaps if I had had such a place, I wouldn't have to just blindly blunder down so many wrong paths by myself. If I had had a place to go for a time-out, to get my thoughts together, my head on straight, I wouldn't have made some of the mistakes I've made.
Or maybe I would have. Or made different ones. Who knows? It's all moot at this point.
But as my daughter leaves again, trying out those sweet damp wings, I can't help but grow a little teary; I can't help but confuse her leaving with my own so long ago.
I was fleeing, when I left and I went as far away as I could and I hoped never to have to return.
She is taking a short hop down the interstate and into town and I know she'll be back, over and over again because she loves this place that her daddy and I have made. This nest that we've created for her, for her sisters and her brother. She is not fleeing. She is flying towards her life and that girl? She is not afraid. Oh, she has her moments when she doesn't know what she wants to do, exactly and despairs that already, at nineteen, she isn't on the path she needs to be, doesn't know what her life plan should be.
"Oh honey," I tell her. "Who does?"
Only the lucky few, I think. The rest of us go along, falling into this or that, making our way as best we can.
And usually, it all works out.
And when the times come when it isn't, there's always home.
And each of them are in the process of learning to make their own homes. The ones they will perhaps raise their own children in. And I'm sure that those homes will be filled with love because my children know about love.

I bought a rocking chair the other day. It's not a great rocking chair and I already have quite a few rocking chairs, but this one called to me. It's upholstered and it's so comfortable. When you sit in it, you just feel comforted.
I showed it to my husband, that sweet wise man, and he sat in it and agreed that it was indeed, a most comfortable chair with a good rock. He patted the arms and said, "This is a grandmama chair."
My eyes opened wide and I realized- he was completely right. I'd bought a grandmama chair.
As far as I know, I have no immediate need for such a thing, but someday, someday.
Someday my kids will come home, not because there's a problem or a need for retreat, but because there's a baby and they'll want to visit and share the miracle that baby will be. They'll want that baby to learn what grandmama's house smells like and looks like and feels like.
And I will sit in my grandmama chair and I will rock that miracle, that baby and I'll lean over and whisper in that tiny, pink, tender seashell of an ear, "Welcome home, baby."
And I'll know that somehow, some way, I have traveled all the way from being that girl who fled a house where she never wanted to return, to this place where returning is a joy.
Because I have a home. And when I think about that, I can't help but feel the sadness lift and maybe, that feeling my chest is the rustling of tiny wings of hope, the tiny wings of satisfaction that no matter what, I have done something right. I have made some wonderful decisions in my life (Mr. Moon!) despite some very bad ones.
The chair is patient, it is waiting.
Me too.
And I'm home.

Sucks In The City

It's hot here, y'all. Hotter than hot! hot! hot! Brangelina sex and you know that is some hot sex.
Because I have four dogs whom I have never trained very well, I choose to leave the air conditioner off during the day so I don't have to spend my entire waking hours opening the door for them to go in and out at their will. If the door is closed for the AC, they will scratch at it until it's a mere scraped-out thing instead of the one-hundred-and-fifty year old door it is, so I just do without artificial cooling during the days and leave the damn door open.
This means that the outside here is always part of the inside, including the occasional bird who flies in through the porch dog door. I am constantly finding bird poop in unexpected places like on the newel post or on the floor in the library.
But I like it like that. I have realized lately that for me, sanity lies in being where I can see what's going on outside and being outside as much as possible. I've spent a lot of time in the yard this weekend, planting some blueberry bushes and watering and weeding. I also went blackberry picking with daughter Lily, which was a bit premature in that they aren't really ripe, but we got enough for this morning's pancakes, which we ate outside under the Bradford pears.
Anyway, all of this is hot work. And for some reason, I don't mind that. I move slowly, I get whatever done that gets done and then when evening comes, we turn on the AC and shut the doors and try to convince the dogs to leave the damn door alone.
Twice this weekend, though, I went out. I ventured beyond the village limits on Friday night to go see Sex In The City and as God is my witness, I will never go to another Friday night movie in my life unless one of my books is made into a movie and there is a premier that I must attend.
And a red carpet better be involved.
I won't go into the many, many reasons that the movie going was such a painful experience but I will say this- it wasn't worth putting a bra on for. Between the unruly crowds and the fact that you have to watch TV commercials before a movie starts these days (when did THAT happen?) and the fact that the movie really wasn't that good, it was just not worth the effort. There were hardly even any movie star bosoms.
And then last night I went to a gathering of people whom I really like to the point of adoration and yet, I found myself so uncomfortable, being inside a very lovely home and chatting with a plate of yummy food on my lap that I almost wept with joy when the woman I'd come with said, "You ready to go?"
Oh yes. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.
I'd already been accused, in a humorous way, of being loaded when in fact, I'd had one beer. My behavior was a bit strange, I admit, but it was only through nervousness, not drunkenness.
The sad fact these days is that you can dress me up but you cannot take me out.
Really.
Don't even try it.
So my friend and I made our good-byes and everyone had to make a big deal about us leaving. The party really had sort of just begun, but we gathered our bowls and purses and took our leave and one man said, "You're going to be halfway home and wish you'd stayed!"
Ha, I thought. I'm just leaving and wish I was halfway home.
I took my friend to her house and when we got there, which is in a woodsy area, with its beautiful flowers and trees and vegetables and chickens and dogs and cats, I looked around and said, "Wow. Why wouldn't anyone rather be here than inside some place making polite conversation?"
And she knew exactly what I meant.
I drove the long way home through fields and woods and the sun was setting and when I got home I said to my husband, "Please don't make me go out again. Ever."
He laughed, but I was serious.
I took off the dreaded bra and put on my linen overalls and went outside to water my blueberries. An owl landed a few feet from me and scooped some unfortunate creature up and took him into a tree to leisurely enjoy while the night crickets and frogs started their singing and fiddling, their every-night jubilee. A white magnolia blossom, cupped and folded for the night gleamed in the twilight and I pulled it down to breathe in its holy fragrance as the night came in fully.
I looked back up at my house, its white walls rising in the darkness, light spilling from the windows, and I thought, no, really, why would I leave?
And of course, I did go to Publix today and that was fine but it's just been such a joy to work in the yard, hang the clothes outside, pick some peas from the garden, make a bean salad and herb bread for our supper of grilled eggplant sandwiches.

It's hot, y'all, but I have porches. I've sat on two of them so far today; I'm sitting on one of them right now. And perhaps my husband and I will go sit on the third in a little while. I can hear the birds, some traffic, a goat wailing from next door. The donkey starts his sequence of hee-haws. Thunder is rumbling off in the distance, although from where I sit I can't even see a cloud.
I have an entire Sunday New York Times to read, we're going to eat the veggie porn eggplant on my home-made bread soon, I am not wearing a bra, and if a magic genie appeared right this second and said, "I'll take you anywhere in the entire world you want to go," I'd have to say, "Thank you kindly, sir, but I'm fine right here."

Yes sir. I am fine. Right here.